Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Jerry an’ Me
By Hiram Rich (b. 1831)N
Nor when the winds may blow,
My Jerry there has left the sea
With all its luck an’ woe:
For who would try the sea at all,
Must try it luck or no.
How words they speak may fall—
They told him blunt, he was too old,
Too slow with oar an’ trawl,
An’ this is how he left the sea
An’ luck an’ woe an’ all.
Out of his beaten way,
If he is young ’twill do, but then,
If he is old an’ gray,
A month will be a year to him,
Be all to him you may.
The door-yard for a deck,
An’ scans the boat a-goin’ out
Till she becomes a speck,
Then turns away, his face as wet
As if she were a wreck.
Are never rich; an’ you,
My Johnny here,—a grown-up man,—
Is man an’ baby too,
An’ we have naught for rainy days,
An’ rainy days are due.
Is restless as a brook,
An’ when he left the boat an’ all,
Home had an empty look;
But I will win him by an’ by
To like the window-nook.
The days when we were wed.
But he shall never know—my man—
The lack o’ love or bread,
While I can cast a stitch or fill
A needleful o’ thread.
How many yet there be,
Whose goodmen full as old as mine
Are somewhere on the sea,
Who hear the breakin’ bar an’ think
O’ Jerry home an’—me.